


A Tiny Little Secret About Me

by MinervaFan



Series: The Sisters Spellman [4]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Academy days, F/F, Harrowing, Mean Girls, Revenge, Secret Relationships, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 17:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20745710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaFan/pseuds/MinervaFan
Summary: Her name was Cadence Miller, and she thought me a fool.I may be a fool, but I love my sister.





	A Tiny Little Secret About Me

Her name was Cadence Miller, and she thought me a fool. 

  


Now Cadence was hardly the first person ever to think me a fool. No, everyone from my family to coven mates and...well, _ most people _ think me a fool.

But Cadence made it personal. 

I was sixteen and wilting under the glare of my older sister’s glow. Harrowing had been survived and moved beyond. Classes were undertaken with grit and determination, burrowed as I was in the detritus of Zelda’s aftermath. 

Every teacher knew her.

Most loved her and judged me lacking.

A few hated her and burdened me with their suspicion, lest we turn out to be cut from the same wicked cloth.

Her army of friends provided a surplus of eyes to watch, report, and intercede should my star ever begin to ascend.

First-year was my introduction to the world of the pariah, and I learned those lessons well. 

I learned to keep my eyes down, my voice low, and my light under a very thick bushel. I learned to hold my hand still, even when I knew the answers before anyone else in my class, even as I suffered through one wrong answer after another as my peers struggled with concepts that came so easily to me.

It wasn’t that Zelda was jealous of me.

She was never jealous of me.

It was just that the universe is finite, and Zelda requires quite a bit of space.

In the year following my dark baptism, I learned to give my sister that space. She learned to fill it.

We found a rhythm, and we managed as we always did.

*

My first encounter with Cadence was during my harrowing as I stood in my slip, freezing beneath the hanging trees, staring straight forward as I was taunted. Of course, it was Zelda’s voice that cut the most deeply. We had been friends once, I thought as the tears chilled my already cold skin. I had loved her more than any, followed her around like a pup, soaking in that glorious light she cast on every available surface just by being Zelda. And if my adoration had been a burden, in those simpler times, my sister had never let it show.

While Zelda’s jeers stung, it was Cadence who seemed to delight the most in my suffering. I came to know that voice well. I dreamed about it for months after. I remembered her words, vicious and mocking, as she cataloged the multiple deficiencies in my appearance. 

My thighs were thick.

My belly paunched and fat.

There was a ridiculous gap in my teeth, and my face was round and babyish.

I’d never thought about my appearance one way or another before that night. I was just who I was, and that was how I looked.

Cadence taught me to compare myself, and Cadence taught me where I did not measure up.

When at last the harrowing was done, the change had become permanent.

I covered myself.

I smiled with my lips closed.

I sucked in my cheeks when I thought I was being watched.

I was always being watched.

*

My seventeenth year came soon enough and with it the relief of no longer being the youngest in Academy. With the new set of students came a new wave of harrowing. I kept my head down, comforting the poor souls as much as I could without actually confronting the bullies. Zelda caught me once, flashing me a warning glare as I hugged a crying girl who’d been traumatized at the hanging tree. But then a gaggle of her friends came laughing down the corridor, and she assumed her rightful place at their lead. We, the poor undesirables, were forgotten as the older girls gossipped and laughed about the upcoming Lupercalia festivities.

I discovered a love for gardening. I’d always spent time in the garden, more at home in the dirt and soil than I’d ever been in society. But as I learned about the plants I nurtured and their magical properties, something flowered inside of me. The life in these seeds, hidden and mysterious, mirrored the life inside of me. And like the seeds I so carefully tended, I too discovered I could rise from beneath the soil, stronger and braver than before.

*

The fallout between Zelda and Cadence was one for the record books. 

I didn’t know the details, nor did I want to know. Probably an argument over some warlock.

Possibly a lovers’ spat.

It wasn’t my business.

One moment they were fast friends, the next they were fast enemies.

The crowd of witches who had formed an army behind them, with Zelda as general and Cadence the lieutenant, now chose sides, an outright civil war that divided the entire school.

Even the teachers were not immune, and it was fairly clear where loyalties fell among those who spent their days at the Academy of the Unseen Arts.

I found myself hiding out more than not, unwilling to become cannon fodder in this titanic clash of egos. In the dead of winter, when the gardens lay cold and dormant, the library became my haven. When my studies were done, I plunged into the world of ancient witches and warlock, reading diaries and histories and anything I could to take my mind off the war zone school had become.

*

I was in the library the day Cadence found me.

Or did I find her? It’s hard to remember.

The book I was looking for was a biography on Boadicea, the warrior witch of the Iceni tribe, who trounced the Romans in battle all those years ago. Of course, it was on the top shelf, and no amount of tippy-toeing would allow me to grasp its aged spine. It was only when I set off in search of a footstool that I saw her, sitting on the floor between the stacks. 

She was crying.

At least, she had been crying.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, not wanting to start anything. All I wanted was the stool on the other side of her, and to grab my book, and to be on my way without trouble. I eased around her, ignoring the way her shoulders hunched, the fierce way she wiped at her cheeks when she thought I wasn’t looking. “Just need the stool.” I grabbed it quickly, turning back to where my escape waited, both physically and emotionally.

“Hilda….” Cadence’s voice, the voice of my bad dreams, sounded fragile and strange. 

I paused, not turning to face her, completely silent, unwilling to acknowledge this immensely awkward moment any more than necessary.

After a moment, she said, “Please don’t tell anyone about this.”

She sounded almost...frightened.

“I won’t,” I said in carefully measured tones. “There’s nothing to tell,” I continued. “I was just getting a book. That’s all.”

I walked back to where the biography waited, proud of myself for my calm demeanor. 

I was unprepared for her to follow me. 

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she asked, her voice incredulous. “Will you?”

I turned to face her, frustrated. Her face was worn, as though she’d had more than her share of sleepless nights. There were dark circles under her eyes, which were shot through with red. “Of course not,” I said.

She nodded, her lower lip between her teeth. “You’re...thank you.” She shrugged. “Not that it will matter much longer, but thank you. You really are nice, even when people…” Her voice caught in her throat. “Even when people don’t deserve it.”

“Nobody deserves to be treated cruelly,” I said in much harsher tones that intended. The look of...was that shame on Cadence’s face? It threw me, and I felt my resolve softening. “If there’s something I can do to help….”

She laughed darkly. “I doubt anybody can help me now,” she said. She was tall, taller than Zelda, with shoulder-length hair just slightly darker than the coffee milk Father used to give us when we were children. Her brown eyes were piercing and intelligent as she sighed heavily. “I’m pretty much through at the Academy.” At my confused look, she explained. “I just got out of a meeting with Father Wormwood. If I don’t bring up my potions grade, and fast, I’ll be expelled.” With that, she began crying again. She turned away from me, mortified.

“I thought you were top of your class.” 

“_ Zelda _ is top of our class,” she said bitterly. “I...I’m really good at faking it, but I blew my last examination. I was barely hanging on, and now Father Wormwood has given me an ultimatum. I have one week to retake the examination and pass with at least ninety-percent, or I am out.”

“Well, that gives you a week to study…” I said. “Surely you can get it down by then.” 

She shook her head. “I can barely keep up with the rest of schoolwork, and I just...I can’t keep the ingredients in my head.” She leaned against the bookshelf, frustration wracking through her entire body. “I’ll never be able to do it. My family...oh, Satan, my mother will die of mortification. My father will never speak to me again. I’ll humiliate my entire family.”

“Surely, you can get someone to help you. Potions are just memorization. Come up with clever little sayings to remember the ingredients. I’m sure you can do it.”

“I can’t tell _ anyone _, Hilda. You don’t understand. You just don’t understand.” Her tears began to flow again. “I have no real friends. Nobody I can trust.”

At that moment, I made the decision to help her. 

And Cadence won a battle in the war.

*

She was perfect, Cadence. Haughty enough, but still humbled by her experience. Quick to learn the little mnemonic devices I taught her. Genuinely thrilled as she memorized one after another of the required potions for her examination.

We met in secret, neither wishing for our agreement to become public knowledge. She for the sake of her reputation, and me for the sake of my sister, her sworn enemy.

I wasn’t certain, but I felt fairly confident that Zelda would not have approved.

*

The day she got the return on her examination, Cadence found me in our study spot hidden behind Crone’s Grove. She ran to me, throwing her arms around me, telling me she’d passed and thanking me profusely.

I patted her on the back, telling her she’d done all the work, wondering exactly how quickly the shoe would drop now that she no longer needed my help.

I never saw the kiss coming.

I never saw the kiss continuing.

Another victory to Cadence.

I swooned, forgetting about everything else as we fell to the ground beneath the trees.

*

We met in secret, stealing kisses and groping clumsily through our clothes.

She called me Sunflower, and I drank in the attention.

She said she loved my curves, had only teased to hide her desire.

We kissed sometimes for an hour, sometimes mere seconds stolen between classes.

It was all very exciting for me.

*

Two weeks in, she asked me to meet her at the witching hour. She wanted to have me all to herself, with no fear of interruption.

Two weeks in, she asked me to sleep with her.

I said yes.

*

I wore my smartest dress.

I curled my hair.

I snuck quietly out of the house, whispering reassurances to my familiars, who didn’t approve one bit of my nocturnal adventures. 

It was the night of the dark moon, and there was barely enough light to see. I went slowly, cautiously, giving myself plenty of time to navigate the path.

I arrived ten minutes earlier than arranged.

Cadence stood laughing with her friends, that same old laugh. The harrowing laugh. The cruel laugh.

“Are you sure Zelda will catch you?” one of her friends asked.

“Absolutely. And if I time it perfectly, she’ll arrive just in time to catch me deflowering her angelic little idiot of a sister.”

“She’ll flay you alive,” another girl said, barely stifling her laughter.

The first girl added, “She’s been saving that cherry for herself since the little twit first got here.”

Cadence laughed again. “Well, too bad, Zelda Spellman. By the time you get around to fucking your little sister, she’ll be used goods.” 

I kept myself hidden. 

I’m not one given to fits of temper.

I’m not a creature of fire, like Zelda.

I’m a creature of earth and water.

I am quiet, and my roots run deep.

When Cadence asked the next day why I’d stood her up, my tears were completely believable. 

We settled on another night, another chance for me to overcome my shyness, to gather my courage so we could finally be together as lovers.

*

Zelda took it better than I expected. 

She understood that it was just my nature to help someone in need, and that Cadence had exploited that. She understood how easy it was to be carried away when pursued.

She understood my anger at being used so horrifically.

What she did not expect was my plan for vengeance.

Nobody messes with my sister.

*

Her name was Cadence Miller, and she thought me a fool.

She also was completely ignorant of the ways of the earth.

She was ignorant of the nature of plants, and their uses in healing and protection as well as their inherant dangers.

Her name was Cadence Miller, and she became known as the girl who rolled naked in poison oak with an unnamed lover, who missed the end of her final term due to severe allergic reactions.

Her name was Cadence Miller, and she learned a very important secret about me.

I may be a fool, but I love my sister.

I may be a twit, but I love my sister.

And I may be easy pickings, but my sister is excellent at glamours--especially glamours of me.

Cadence is lucky all she got was hives.

The End


End file.
